


into timeless edges

by wordcatchers



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, I have a lot of feelings, Post-Canon, Post-Episode 5: Polarized
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 11:27:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12680961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordcatchers/pseuds/wordcatchers
Summary: once they leave it behind, they drift between on the way to seattle. but they'll wade through it together.





	into timeless edges

**Author's Note:**

> vague summary because it's nearly 3am. it's a motel fic after the save chloe ending. first fic in months? yeah. and first pricefield fic, even though i was one of those people who played the first episode the day it came out and remembers the stuttering sound bug. man, 2015 was all about this game for me.
> 
> but these two, man. they still get me. it's about time i wrote something with them.
> 
> also: un-beta'ed. please forgive any typos/grammar errors i've overlooked.

The motels along I-5, scattered between cities like Eugene and Portland, were nothing much. Max fiddled with the TV antenna, trying to get any sort of reception, while Chloe was down at the vending machine, kicking at it to get their drinks out. She’d paid _three bucks,_ for fuck’s sake. Scrambled together between the both of them. All for a cherry Coke for her and a peach Snapple tea for her partner in time.

 _As if she’d ever use those powers again_. The thought ran across Chloe’s mind as she rammed her side into the machine once more, eyes widening as she heard the telltale clunks of bottles falling to freedom, if only for a moment.

“Hella _yes,_ ” she whispered, dropping to her knees to dig around the tray they’d dropped into. A bit of wrist maneuvering, a smidgen of time biting her tongue in concentration, and she had them both in her hands, an overly proud smile on her face.

Max, back in their room with the double bed, was nearly at that sweet, _sweet_ spot where the picture would get to the best quality it could: mid-1990’s scratchy bunny-eared television. The sound was surprisingly better than the image would ever be. Though, at this time of night, she wondered why she was even trying, when everything on was either infomercials or re-run news. And she wasn’t overly fond of either, but would take the former over any current Oregon news. Or national news, at that.

She didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think about hardly anything.

The door jiggled open; Chloe burst in, called out, “Catch!” and… _oh_. She saw the Snapple blur closer, closer, closer - palm out, no time. It didn’t hit her, but it landed on the floor. No go-backs, no rewinds. She was done with that, and it wasn’t worth looking cool in front of… in front her best friend. Chloe smirked, as if maybe waiting to lose another memory, but… nothing.

Instead, Max took a knee and picked the plastic bottle up, lame as that was. That’s who she really was, someone who never caught anything tossed to her, always missed chances, always…

“Heh,” she faintly heard from Chloe as she popped open the cap on her Coke. “Mad Max back to how things were.” She wanted to laugh back, with her, like it really was true. _Back to how things were._ But that was gone, things would never be back to how it was between them in 2007. But if it made Chloe laugh, even just a breath of one, Max was some semblance of happy. Chloe was here, with her, something that had been up in the air not even two weeks ago.

She swallowed hard, pushing that day out of her mind, but her chest still tightened up. She wasn’t sure how to breathe any more. She balled her left fist up, fingernails digging into skin. _Remember, Joyce is still alive. Chloe’s teary smile, their embrace._ But shadows of others still clung to her as thick cobwebs, suffocating her: Warren, Stella, Hayden, Evan, and so many others she’d never know all the names. But they gripped at her, tighter than anything else ever had.

“...Max?” a soft voice came from right in front of her. A hand touched her shoulder, fingers wrapped around. The feeling brought her back; blinking, her vision cleared: Chloe.

“...I’m, I’m here, Chloe,” she stuttered, breathing still shaky, uneven.

Chloe bit her lip. “Something I said, right?” She guided Max over to one of the beds, helped her plant her ass down on something solid and took the Snapple from her hand, setting it on the floor. Then she sat down next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, fingers rubbing a soothing motion over her arm. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Max.”

Max breathed in long, out slow. “It’s… okay, Chloe. It’s just. My brain. It’s my fault. I’m--”

But Chloe’s other hand planted itself on her mouth, shushing her. “No, _no_ , Caulfield. Don’t… don’t fucking apologize.”

 _But it’s so hard not to,_ she thought, Chloe’s palm still covering her mouth. She furrowed her brow, shut her eyes. In younger years, by now she would have licked Chloe’s hand, and Chloe would have made some faux disgusted noise, wiping the spit on Max’s cheek. Now, though, she just took Chloe’s hand away with her own, reaching down and grabbing up her Snapple again.

She got up from the bed, walked over to the window, one hand pulling at the closed curtain. Drinking from the bottle, Max moved in front of it, letting it fall across her back. A fog had settled over the strip parking lot, and the gas station kitty-cornered from the motel wasn’t as easy to make out as a few hours ago when they’d decided to stop here for the night. At least one night.

It was so quiet here, beyond the low static murmur of the infomercial. Hardly any other guests, just some shitstain interstate stop in the middle of nowhere, as Chloe would call it. Had called it after they’d gotten their key from the less-than-interested middle-aged woman running the check-in desk. Max remembered giggling then, allowing herself to. It’d been easy. Just like...

 _“Take care of yourselves on the way up, you hear?”_ Joyce had told them.

Take care of yourselves…

Chloe hadn’t followed her this time. Max came out from behind the curtain, finding her fiddling with the antenna now. Because why not? Max shook her head, the corners of her mouth turning up just slightly. She needed to focus on here. Now.

“I… Chloe!” She walked over to her, pulling her away from the TV. “It was fine how it was before!” Chloe raised her arms up in defeat, yet her face said otherwise.

“Max Caulfield… you’re _smiling_ ,” she said, pinching Max’s cheek and smirking. “Oh, I think it’s better now, actually. Just look, will you?”

Max grabbed Chloe’s wrist, pulling her hand away from her face to look back over at the TV. It was _worse_ , what was Chloe even talki--

As she turned back around, she was grabbed by the fringes of her drab grey zip-up jacket, pulled down into Chloe’s lap on the bed. Making a slight disparaging noise, knowing she _should_ have seen this coming from the way Chloe was acting, Max pouted. But she couldn’t keep it up, not with the way Chloe was running her fingers through her hair and nuzzling against her cheek.

“C’mon, Max,” Chloe murmured. “It looks better from here, doesn’t it?”

 _You mean_ **_you_ ** _look better than anything on there._ She still remembered that dared kiss, every single moment between them after the wreckage of the storm collapsed on top of their lives. Wandering into town after it had happened. Finding Joyce. Packing up in Chloe’s room, her dorm room, as somehow - miraculously, perhaps, both had weathered the storm like they had.

She hadn’t been expecting another kiss, but something more and more had been building. Palpable and electrifying, Max pushed it away at first, because hadn’t Chloe reacted negatively in her room the first time? Or perhaps she wasn’t remembering it right, maybe she let…

Either way the memory of their first kiss really went, their second was as vivid in her mind now as it was when it happened. She’d pushed Chloe away from where she was laying on her bed in the Blackwell dorms. Her best friend touched a finger to her own lips, upright but still straddling Max. She had still felt so vulnerable, with Chloe watching her as she did.

The next words echoed in her mind, as softly as Chloe had said them in the early morning hours. She’d hardly heard Chloe’s voice that soft and low before. And never in this way.

 _“Is this… all right?”_ Chloe had bit her lip, one hand awkwardly resting on the back her neck. Still not moving any further away, though. Her eyes still…. Max had involuntarily gulped, then voluntarily nodded.

Everything after that was voluntary. Awkward, desperate, _needy_ , but deliberate.

Tonight, the memory rushed through her as she answered Chloe, a small smile appearing on her face. _“Yes._  It does look better from here.”

Nothing was or would ever go back to how things were for them. They could never get that back, and Max knew in the deepest crevices of her mind that for the both of them, it would always haunt their memories; but after all that Chloe had done for her, forgiven her after those years apart?

She tucked away the darkest parts from the past two or so weeks, at least for now, and brought Chloe in by the back of her neck, kissing her. It felt like blood rushing through her body, heat warming up every inch of her skin, and something like that tree fort they had built when they were children. It felt like utter safety in the middle of the catastrophe they’d found themselves in.

Chloe moaned into her mouth, pulling her in closer, their chests against each other. She let herself fall back onto the bed, bringing Max along. Max rolled over onto her side, dragging her whole body onto the half-unmade bed, watching as Chloe followed her movements. Facing each other, Chloe reached out and caressed a lock of her hair, resting her hand on Max’s cheek.

“You okay?” she asked.

Max didn’t have to absolutely force the smile this time. Not with Chloe.

“If you stay with me.”

Chloe effortlessly grinned, something like the day she’d danced on her bed, egging Max on to join her (“Dance, hippie!”). She shuffled closer to her on the bed, and forgetting that they had paid for a double, didn’t leave her side for the rest of the night.

_“I promise, Max Caulfield.”_

**Author's Note:**

> p. s. kudos are lovely, and i treasure comments. thank you for reading. <3


End file.
